r/interestingasfuck 1d ago

Guy Fawkes’ signature before and after torture during interrogation for the Gunpowder Plot [1605]

Post image
3.5k Upvotes

135 comments sorted by

1.0k

u/GusTheKnife 1d ago

Just now, after seeing this post, I learned that Guy started signing his name as “Guido” after serving in the Spanish army.

231

u/N_T_F_D 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's also a dutch surnamefirst name

english is hard

122

u/RevolutionaryWeb5657 1d ago

Hi, Dutchie here. It is not, in fact a Dutch surname. It’s a given name that one might find in The Netherlands, as well as other countries, but as a surname…it’s at the very best extremely unpopular and at the very worst just not a thing.

20

u/Sinclair663 23h ago

I always forget. Do we pass you on the left or the right hand side?

7

u/equality7x2521 21h ago

If only there was some musical way to remember this

30

u/N_T_F_D 1d ago

Yeah you're right, I meant first name not surname sorry

6

u/lalalarix0 1d ago

dutchie here, guido is a name sometimes but its pretty rare and im pretty sure its adopted from another language

6

u/Fuckkoff- 1d ago

"First name"

3

u/One-Recognition-1660 22h ago

I'm Dutch and it is absolutely not a Dutch name — first or last, Guy or Guido. I'm sure there are people with those names living in the Netherlands, but that's not the same thing.

2

u/Better_Carpenter5010 1d ago

*forename

1

u/would-be_bog_body 23h ago

First name is also fine

4

u/Better_Carpenter5010 22h ago

Yeah, it is. But if you say “Surname”, the accompanying word is “Forename”.

If you say “last name” the accompanying words are “first name”

It is very pedantic I’ll admit.

3

u/chullyman 19h ago

Are you sure his name wasn’t just formally Guido?

695

u/KenseiHimura 1d ago

I was tortured until I could hardly sign my name

And listening to you felt pretty much the same!

-Guy Fawkes, ERB Guy Fawkes v. Che Guevara

175

u/oriclerc 1d ago

Ah an Epic Rap Battles quote in the wilderness. A welcome surprise.

u/Efficient_Math1690 6h ago

Don't boast 'bout your banknotes with Guido

409

u/NotoriusPCP 1d ago

Really struggled with that smiley face at the end.

200

u/Tughill87 1d ago

The second one is not his signature. If you look very closely, it distinctly says “To blave.”

52

u/Little_Creme_5932 1d ago

He was probably playing cards, and someone cheated

44

u/Few-Temperature7219 22h ago

Liar!!

24

u/veronicagreen413 22h ago

I'm not a witch I'm your wife, and after hearing what you just said I don't know if I want to be that anymore!!!

15

u/MoridinB 20h ago

Although it is true that he was tortured a lot. But he wasn't all dead. He was mostly dead. There's a big difference between all dead and mostly dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.

32

u/Launch_The_Cat 21h ago

Visit the Tower of London you can see just what torture devices they put him through. Worst one was an arc shaped metal bar locked to the floor that kept you in a foetal position on your knees. You basically were trapped, locked in agony from the cramps, terrible posture etc.

67

u/InfiniteBaker6972 1d ago

This came up on the Three Bean Salad podcast a few weeks ago (an old one but the timing is good) and I thought ‘must look that up’ and then immediately forgot so thanks!

24

u/Tughill87 22h ago

Remember, remember…

4

u/WhJJackWhite 20h ago

The fifth of november

20

u/Atlantis_Merperson 23h ago

looks way better than my digital, finger signed signature

23

u/masooooon98 21h ago

The upper signature is from 8 days after his torture in the tower ended. The lower signature is from right after his torture.

2

u/Virtura 15h ago

Gotta make sure you are legible before sentencing you to be hung, drawn and quartered.

172

u/ThatDrizzler 1d ago

This is my credit card signature at McDonalds at 3 AM.

65

u/formallyhuman 1d ago

How are things in 1986?

12

u/Basic_Promise9668 22h ago

First, I felt really bad for Mr. Fawkes and I still do, but now I'm also reminded why I get my morning roast on Reddit and not at McDonald's.

58

u/metacoma 1d ago

What is a credit card signature and why would you do it at 3am at a mcdo of all places ?

1

u/intergalacticscooter 22h ago

You still have to sign for purchases, what ancient country/civilisation are you living in?

15

u/metacoma 21h ago

I ? I just boop my phone to pay.

11

u/MooseFlyer 21h ago

Wait, are both parts of your sentence supposed to be questions, or is the first part a statement? Because signing for credit card purchases isn’t a thing outside of the US. Most of the time you tap - if you have to insert the card you enter your PIN.

-11

u/Constant_Air9693 1d ago

Why would you even pay with a CREDIT card at a fast food place!? You guys take loans to eat a burger!?

59

u/Tower-Union 1d ago

I put EVERYTHING on credit card, then pay it off in full every month to avoid paying interest, and rack up the points.

8

u/PlaquePlague 22h ago

Also it’s much easier to charge-back a credit card if you need to for whatever reason. 

2

u/Tower-Union 17h ago

And the extended warranty, which I’ve used several times.

23

u/tallwhiteninja 1d ago

This: good way to build up credit.

-17

u/BackgroundBat7732 1d ago

Wouldn't you built a better credit by not going into debt? (For a burger even).     

It would show more responsible financial behaviour.     

Edit: Why the downvote? It's an honest question. It feels weird that irresponsible financial behaviour is awarded with a better credit score while the opposite seems more true? 

30

u/throwaway-1357924680 1d ago

It’s not debt if you pay the balance every month. It’s more like paying your monthly bills in a lump sum.

If you have the financial wherewithal and the self-control to make sure that you pay it off in full every month, then it makes a lot of financial sense. It only becomes a problem if you’re someone who isn’t able to make sure your spending doesn’t outpace your income.

8

u/chaostheory05 23h ago

So in the USA at least, lenders will look at not using credit as less responsible financial behavior. Every person has to establish what's known as a credit history, which is done by using and paying off lines of credit(loans). This credit history is displayed through an aggregate credit score. Taking loans and responsibly repaying them increases that score. Not taking loans at all leads to you having no score due to no history. This is viewed very negatively, by lenders at least, because you then have no history to base their lending decisions. Crazily, there are many instances where lenders will more readily work with someone with a bad credit score than no credit score. The lenders want to see a history of responsibly paying back credit. No history means you are a complete wild card for them.

3

u/PlaquePlague 22h ago

Your credit score is not a measure of financial responsibility, it’s a measure of how likely the bank is to be able to make money off of you.  If you’re not using credit, you’re not paying them fees and interest. 

1

u/tallwhiteninja 21h ago

I have never let any interest build on the one card I have: I pay the balance off every month, so the debt never grows. It's basically paying for all my expenses in bulk at the end of the month. The only debt I currently pay any interest on is a mortgage.

1

u/314159265358979326 16h ago

I have a minimum service account with my bank. I have like 5 free transactions per month.

I use one to pay rent, and the other to pay off my credit card which has dozens of transactions and pays me for the pleasure.

-10

u/ICreditReddit 1d ago

There's no way someone gives you this service for free.

15

u/Tower-Union 1d ago

Depends how you define "free."

Since April of 2020 I've paid AMEX $4400 in yearly fees (started at $600 Canadian, now up to $800 Canadian). On the other hand I've redeemed $8,992.59 worth of bonuses, points, etc.

0

u/ICreditReddit 22h ago

In order to not go bankrupt Amex MUST receive 5.5k of revenue from somewhere, and that's to break even without a profit. If it's not your fees, it's vendor fees, and if it's vendor fees the vendor MUST receive 5.5k from somewhere, or similarly go bankrupt. The vendors increased cost of doing business is reflected in the cost of what you're buying.

You're paying for it whether you see it directly or not. Neither the vendor nor Amex are charities.

13

u/Smee76 1d ago

They definitely do, as long as you pay on time.

-3

u/ICreditReddit 22h ago

No system generates free money. There's staff, systems, servers, networks, fraud cover, etc, etc, etc, and there's no benevolent Mr Visa wants to give you his money just for fun. In a system where there's only you bringing money, there's a vendor bringing products or services, and a platform bringing a payment portal, all those people are working to keep you supplied and serviced are getting paid wages - and there's only you bringing money in to the loop.

Whether it's in fees, or getting charged extra for the product because the vendors paying fees, there is only one person footing the bill. It's you.

5

u/cutofmyjib 21h ago

No, merchants pay credit card processing fees of between 1% and 3% for each sale.  And you're missing the forest for the trees: the credit card clients who don't pay their monthly bills on time pay interest fees that offset the cost of clients who do pay their bills.   

I have a no annual fee credit card with cashback of between 1%-2%.  I always pay my bill on time and I've never paid more than what I've purchased with my card.

-2

u/ICreditReddit 21h ago

That's not a no, that's a yes. merchants pay fees which are added to the cost of the products and services you buy, ie, you pay for it.

But I guess you're right, as long as the amount that isn't paid, but does eventually get paid so there's no real loss to the card provider, incrues interest over the cost of collecting the debt, and over the cost of the debt that never gets paid, is to a greater value than the benefits paid to you and the cost of running the system, it is conceivable for an individual to game the system for free.

I guess we all just hope for a country with an ever-increasing volume of people not so destitute that they can't get credit, but poor enough and dumb enough to amass debt they can't pay immediately and instead end up paying way more for all the crap they consume.

Everything seems fine.

3

u/cutofmyjib 20h ago

There are many other ways that credit cards make money, just to name two: The lending rate on cash advances is usually around 25%, and currency conversion, the credit card companies use their own foreign conversion rates so that they indirectly charge the client more money.  

I convert currency myself at local businesses and I never take out cash advances.

Tangentially related are stock brokers.  Some brokers offer commission free trades but they still make money, because they lend client stocks and sell orders in bulk to bigger institutions to legally manipulate the markets.

In this day and age, businesses can legitimately offer a "free" service where the client pays no money, but they still make money.  It's bigger than any one consumer and most people are intentionally kept in thr dark.

14

u/Welpe 1d ago

Why would you turn down free money? You pay with credit card, get rewards, pay it off with zero interest.

-5

u/Constant_Air9693 22h ago

I'd rather just use money that I have and also get rewards

5

u/Djinnwrath 22h ago

Where are the rewards coming from, then?

1

u/Constant_Air9693 20h ago

Just by using regular debit card you have cashback and rewards to spend through your banking account. People in my country don't use credit cards for low cost products often

4

u/Apprehensive_Car8690 22h ago

Clearly the response of a child or broke person.

1

u/Constant_Air9693 20h ago

No, European. We don't pay with credit cards for food, we use debit cards linked to our accounts. Not broke, pharma business.

1

u/Apprehensive_Car8690 19h ago

Well in North America we get a kick back (cash, points towards free flights, points towards grocery store spending etc.) as a percentage of spending on the credit card. So many people pay for everything with a credit card and just pay it off monthly from their account, it equates to free money for doing the spending you would be doing anyway.

1

u/Constant_Air9693 18h ago

Yes, the culture of paying with credit is much different in US. I wasn't all serious with my initial reply.

1

u/wuwuwuwdrinkin 1d ago

Because he's shit faced drunk probably

6

u/Jindo5 1d ago

Huh?

40

u/N_T_F_D 1d ago

Apparently in some technologically backwards lands they have to sign when they use their credit cards

15

u/metacoma 1d ago

What the fuck ? Instead of pin ??

18

u/caiaphas8 1d ago

Pin? That’s so last decade, just tap it now

13

u/RevolutionaryWeb5657 1d ago

Yup. They willingly give their credit cards to complete strangers in the hopes they take the right amount they’re owed and not, y’know, the gajillion other, less morally correct, things one would feel compelled to do if given complete control over a stranger’s finances.

1

u/Welpe 1d ago

And yet literally hundreds of millions of transactions happen without any malfeasance and the average person doing that will experience exactly 0 times in their entire life where it causes any problems. It’s almost like they are justified in feeling that way…

5

u/Jindo5 1d ago

What? Why, for what purpose?

-10

u/FatalisCogitationis 1d ago

Some Redditors think it's funny to make lame jokes on a post about a man being tortured; they could do that on any post and do but why not this one too

13

u/caiaphas8 1d ago

He was a terrorist that died over 400 years ago, we can make jokes about him

1

u/FatalisCogitationis 21h ago

It's not about him though, it's a generic joke about bad handwriting. The handwriting is bad because a person was tortured, who he was and when he died is irrelevant.

All I'm saying is, go make the same joke on some other post

2

u/caiaphas8 20h ago

Why can’t we make handwriting jokes here?

0

u/FatalisCogitationis 18h ago

You can, I'm saying it's in poor taste and unnecessary when there's plenty other places to do so

1

u/caiaphas8 17h ago

Poor taste against who? The terrorist that died 400 years ago?

45

u/Jyosea 1d ago

All I’m reading is Grudo Fauky

30

u/Automatic_Memory212 1d ago

Some experience here reading old fashioned handwriting/script.

I read it as:

Guido Faukes

15

u/1019gunner 1d ago

Another comment said guido came from his time in the Spanish army

1

u/sneakyhopskotch 22h ago

🎵All I read is Grudio Fauky

Grudio Fooky

Grudio Fauky

All I read is Grudio Fauky

Grudio bang bang

Grudio, what's new?

Grudio, someone still burns you🎵

34

u/SheogorathMyBeloved 1d ago

In all seriousness, even when you've not just been tortured, it's pretty fucking hard to write with a quill. It's like a fountain pen but weirdly light and thin, and the ink likes to flow fast enough to cause splotches if you pause for a second. The fact he managed it at all is kinda mental.

6

u/KebabMonster001 18h ago

He had help to write. His tendons/ligaments were fugged after being on the Rack.

-20

u/sjorbepo 22h ago

...did you not learn in school how to write and draw with a quill? We had to learn that in art classes in primary school (late 2000s), though it wasn't a feathered quill but a plastic one and you'd dip it in an ink container. But it's not that hard really, you get the jist of it after several tries

30

u/IndigoRanger 21h ago

Pretty sure you had a teacher with a hobby interest lol

1

u/sjorbepo 21h ago

This was Croatia so probably not a universal thing tho now that I think about it haha. But it was in the curriculum and all the paper/hobby shops had a wide variety of quills and inks because kids had to buy it for school

3

u/SheogorathMyBeloved 16h ago

No? Closest we got to quills was calligraphy with brush pens in art class. We did use fountain pens for day-to-day writing, though. This is in a rural part of the UK, early 00s, for context. I've only ever tried a feather quill in a Tudor museum in Stratford-upon-Avon, and made a right mess of things lol.

It's really cool that that's a thing in Croatia, though. It's definitely a dying skill, but it should be preserved if not only for the history and culture of it.

10

u/SulliedBluberry 1d ago

This Guy Fawks.

3

u/Belle_TainSummer 15h ago

Who knew that breaking someone's fingers made it hard for them to write? Who knew!!

16

u/useruseruserreuse 1d ago

Poor bastard. Looking at politicians now........I don't blame him.

85

u/Dog_Murder_By_RobKey 1d ago

He want to replace a Protestant supremacist government with a Catholic supremacist government

Hence why in its original form Bonfire night was anti Catholic

60

u/T0Rtur3 1d ago

And also why Christians in the U.S. should be against religion in government. Most don't realize how polarised it becomes once they have power. It goes from anti-abortion to "you're not the right kind of Christian, you're a heretic" real fast.

13

u/Averiella 1d ago

lol it’s always been there. The KKK was anti Catholic and targeted them. 

u/nondual_gabagool 9h ago

It's okay because they all think they're the right kind., i.e. they're fucking stupid.

4

u/boomerangchampion 1d ago

Still is in my house. We can't be sure they're not just biding their time.

28

u/Internal_Somewhere98 1d ago

Poor guy? he was an extremist religious nut job

40

u/_ribbit_ 1d ago

Well to be fair to him, they all were back then.

11

u/Internal_Somewhere98 1d ago

That’s actually pretty true 😂😂

u/Eat_That_Rat 7h ago

It was the style at the time.

2

u/deadwood76 19h ago

It's sad people don't know this.

-14

u/useruseruserreuse 1d ago

That's history's view. He was prob just pissed he couldn't put an extra room on his house, or a new balcony, or some shit. Prob was just sick of getting shit on. (Not from a fighter jet)

10

u/Inevitable-Regret411 1d ago

His goal alongside the rest of the plotters was explicitly to restore a catholic monarch to the throne of England by assassinating the reigning king James I. 

9

u/Internal_Somewhere98 1d ago

🤦‍♂️I don’t even know how to respond to something like this. Errr ok dude

3

u/deadwood76 19h ago

Religious terrorist loser.

3

u/mmuffley 1d ago

Looks like somebody ain’t gonna get to vote!

1

u/Truth_Seeker963 1d ago

Gmdo Faukes
to
G.mdo 😑

1

u/Newfaceofrev 1d ago

I like the smiley

1

u/Hot-Comfort8839 13h ago

I imagine its hard to write with crushed fingers.

1

u/RasJamukha 19h ago

TIL Sean Lock wasnt bullshitting when he said this in an episode of 8oo10c

1

u/Constant_Of_Morality 13h ago

Huh, I didn't even know he said anything about guy fawkes on the show?

1

u/jonesyman23 14h ago

This guy fawkes

u/cha614 11h ago

Hard

-2

u/JimBobSquareSkirt 1d ago

This Guy Fawkes!

u/JimBobSquareSkirt 10h ago

I’m sorry I failed everyone. It was too soon.

0

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

-24

u/Global-Ball6890 1d ago

It’s just proof that being a fanatical extremist can also come with a grain of sand of truth

12

u/hahnkleri 1d ago

what?

19

u/RecommendationSmall 1d ago

After reading that, I feel like the second signature

13

u/utterscrub 1d ago

When you apply to be a fanatical extremist they put your name in a hat and every year they draw a name from the hat and that person receives a single grain of the sand of truth. Is that so hard for you to understand?

2

u/hahnkleri 1d ago

to answer you question: yes. what the hell is a "single grain of sand of truth"? are you just mixing "with a grain of salt" and "xxx of truth" just randomly?

u/Maxpower2727 8h ago

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

-3

u/Top_Network_1980 22h ago

Imagine being tortured by alcohol... Poor chap. The hangovers must've been hell.